


La Valse

by Huntsmonsters



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Psychic Bond, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:36:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntsmonsters/pseuds/Huntsmonsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finally in a readable form on AO3. Erik and Charles are bound by a psychic connection that causes them physical pain when separated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I feel like I at the very least owe it to all the people who have so kindly showered me with incredibly sweet words about this fic to get it into a readable format, rather than jumping from LJ comment to LJ comment. 
> 
> For those that did not encounter this fic in its original format, it was based on the following prompt: "Erik and Charles are psychically bonded mysteriously and cannot be apart without physical/psychic pain. Erik starts hearing Charles's thoughts/feeling his emotions." After that it was basically off to the races.
> 
> Changes for those who have read it before won't be very extreme, but I'm basically just cleaning through and revising each chapter. Some of the original chapters will be merged because they were so short in the original context. This is a currently unfinished fic - I don't know if it will ever be completed. I will say that the in progress second movie is likely to kick start me big time once more news starts coming out about it, as will my life calming down in the spring. In the meantime, here's what there is, as it is. Thank you again to everyone!

Erik has had Charles in his head before, but not like this.

He is dreaming, and the dream is not his own. He knows it isn't because it doesn't match the theme, doesn't fit in the sequence. There is no camp. Shaw's face is nowhere to be found. When Erik dreams, it is about the past, about the memories that haunt him. Rarely does he find himself in the midst of the sort of dreams he hears other people describing, the sort of dreams where reality is an afterthought, where physics have gone mad, where anything wonderful can happen. His dreams are grounded in reality, mired in it, unable to pull away from it. He does not dream of the future. He never has.

In the dream, he is a young boy in a large, empty house. Charles' manor, but viewed through the prismatic, cold blue lens of a lonely time long ago. He is small as he pads down the corridor, carrying a heavy copper flashlight. He flicks the switch, sweeping wan light across the courtyard.

Because he's in the courtyard now. He was in the hall, before, but now he is in the courtyard. There is a statue here of a mermaid twisting down through an invisible, imagined wave, and it leers at him.

There is a pause as he feels real fear, fear at being alone and not knowing what lies beyond the courtyard, and then he reaches out with his mind. It is an expansion. It feels like breathing in, and comes as easily. Less a stretching out of power and more a releasing of power that has been held in, the fragile walls around it fall away, and he begins to hear whispers, feel flickers of emotion from all sides. It feels like passing his hand over a flame, a touching, flickering, licking of different identities, different ideas and consciousnesses. He's young in this dream, so he doesn't really know how to sort them out yet, but he knows enough to identify the ones he's familiar with. Mother is home and asleep, a rarity - usually she's busy with charity balls or dinner with some society darling or another. There's the groundskeeper a mile away, and someone taking a walk through the forest.

And then there is the unknown. He can feel them, close by, their thoughts a low hum of searching. This frightens him. It feels both familiar and foreign at once, and he doesn't know why.

There is a door in the courtyard. Erik has never been through it, but he knows that there is a staircase beyond that will lead him to the basement, where the person is hiding. He thinks about waking his mother, then discards the idea. She would just tell him he was dreaming and send him back to bed.

He goes down the stairs. They lead down forever into a pluming darkness, edged with gold. It flows around him like smoke as he walks further down. And the smell.

Erik knows that smell.

His bare feet settle on the stone floor of the basement. He cannot find the light switch - feeling along the wall, it isn't where it should be. He sweeps the flashlight over the dark, but reveals nothing but more darkness. The plumes are like fog. They smell like burning. He can taste it now on his tongue, the darkness. It smells like charred meat, tastes like flesh and metal in his mouth.

He hears a sound and turns sharply, and a chill settles over him as he realizes the smoke has obscured the doorway. He doesn't know where he is anymore, surrounded on all sides by darkness that glitters like precious metal and tastes like cooking skin.

"Erik?"

He turns, and the darkness has parted. There is a monster there, standing by a chair, bolted to the ground. It has a metal hoop around the top, fitted with belts to lock it against the skull of the person seated in it. The restraints on the arms are open.

The monster beside it has a mustache, glasses, pasty white skin, and a hump on his back that moves and twitches. "Ein guter junge," he says gesturing to the chair. His smile is so gentle in that twitching, peeling face. "Nehmen sie bitte platz."

The belts on the chair whip out like snakes. They wrap so tightly around his wrists that he can feel them bruising, and this is too real, Charles thinks, too real to be a dream.

He tries to press his feet down on the stone to slow the drag, but he can't. The darkness has slicked the ground like it's covered in raw petrol, and his toes cannot find purchase. The restraints drag him in, and the monster's long fingers secure them as he screams and lashes out. There are demands, pointed demands of thought fired into the thing’s brain ( _release, free, let me go, let me go, let me go_ ) but there is nothing there to receive them. It smiles at him again. He screams, and the chair bends forward, metal screeching as it does, and the band at the top snaps tightly around his head.

The monster has a knife. The smoke is choking him now, and he cannot get a good breath. The knife is close now, coming for his eyes. "Lassen sie uns einen blick haben nach innen," he says, and Charles doesn't speak German, but he knows what it means. Let us have a look inside. Metal, metal and flesh, and metal is the taste of

 

"Blood," Erik says, as he sits up in bed.

"Blood," mumbles Charles, as his eyes open.

Erik is banging on Charles' bedroom door before five minutes are out.

 

Charles opens the door, unsurprised, of course, at who is on the other side of it. Erik is halfway across the room before Charles has managed to close the door again.

"I didn't do it," he says. "Before you ask."

"You're sure about that?" Erik asks. He's facing the long windows on the opposite side of the room. Charles pulled the curtains back from them when he first awoke, and the moonlight shining in throws reverse shadows on the floor, windows of reflected light painted across the carpet.

Erik turns to look back at him. Charles is wearing a red robe he's owned for as long as he can remember, worn and older than he is. Erik is wearing the black silk pyjamas Charles gave him to wear when he discovered Erik didn't usually wear anything to bed at all. Sleeping in the nude, like a Roman warrior, Charles had noted with amusement. Erik hadn’t thought it funny, and had just watched him with a brow raised. Charles had reminded him that there were children in the house, and Erik had taken the clothes with some eye rolling. In retrospect, however, it occurs to Charles that he's never seen Erik bare anything more than his arms. Whatever lies under his clothes, he isn't intent on showing it.

"I'm sure," Charles says. "Why would I lie about a thing like this?"

"And you didn't lose control in your sleep?"

"I am not one of the children downstairs, Erik," he says, with faint, strained huff of laughter. He’s not offended by the suggestion. He’d thought of it himself before discounting it. If it had been his mistake, not only would he have known, he would have admitted it.

"So you're saying that's impossible."

"I'm saying it's extremely unlikely," he corrects. "And that I would have known. No, it was something else, something foreign. I didn't sense another presence. Still, it might have been that telepath of Shaw's. She has enough skill for it."

“Do you sense her anywhere on the grounds?” Erik asks. He’s all coiled energy. It’s the nightmares. They always leave him looking for something to lash out at in retribution for imagined tortures that he cannot revenge himself against.

"No,” Charles says. “But, theoretically, if she had, perhaps, a device similar to Cerebro -”

“But no one does,” Erik says. “For argument’s sake, what would she gain by forcing us to dream the same dream?" Erik walks back toward him. "What grand goals would that achieve?"

Charles' lips part briefly in anticipation of the rebuttal sure to flow to his lips, but he can think of no logical purpose for it. "Alright. You have me there."

"I do," Erik says.

Charles looks back at him, blue eyes gone contemplative and dark. Erik can't help but wonder how much Charles' mind wanders in any given conversation, how present he is at any given time. How could you be, when you can feel so many minds touching your own?

"I don't all the time," Charles says. "I can put walls up, if I so choose. Like in the dream, the way you felt. I prefer to stay open as much as I can, however."

"I hate that," Erik says, matter-of-factly, pointing at him. "If you are going to have a conversation, reading the other person's replies before they state them is cheating."

Charles' eyes have gone soft. Erik doesn't like that one bit. _You're deflecting._

Erik stares back at him. "I'm deflecting, now? Just because I pointed out how irritating it is to know you can’t even wait for me to speak?”

 _You don't have to be a mind reader to tell, Erik._ Erik doesn't know if he'll ever get used to that sensation - thoughts floating in, weighted, foreign and yet present within his own mind. _You went straight to the cause and swerved around the content. You’re being defensive._

Erik watches him, unblinking, and refuses to follow Charles’ down that line of thought. He isn’t being defensive. It’s simply that his thoughts are his thoughts, his nightmares his own, and someone else nudging their way into them is not something he’s going to permit if he has any say in it.

He changes the subject. “Is that actually what it’s like?” He’s thinking about that easy, smooth feeling of reaching out and touching the minds of everyone around him during the early part of the dream.

Charles nods, without hesitation. In the light coming in from the windows, his eyes are pale. They make Erik think of the color of quicksilver, of faded stripes on a uniform. He presses the images down, not interested in letting Charles follow them anywhere. “Yes,” Charles says. “It is.”

“I don’t know how you don’t go mad from it,” Erik says, pacing toward the window again. “That many voices at once, all clamoring for attention.”

“I am a little better at it now than I was when I was twelve,” he says, smiling faintly. He doesn’t repeat himself, doesn’t say this is still deflecting. He simply cuts Erik off at the pass. “You were a sonderkommando?”

The word sounds wrong in Charles’ mouth, the accent an Englishman’s appropriation of a German one. “ _Sonderkommando_ ,” Erik corrects, unthinkingly, hardening the s at the beginning. Then, after a pause, “Yes.”

That is clearly intended to be the end of that, but Charles, being Charles, presses gently on with his silence. He clearly expects Erik to keep talking, and he sits on the edge of the bed, waiting to hear more. The tension in Erik’s shoulders is visible beneath his thin shirt, shoulder blades knitted close.

“It was Shaw’s opinion that it would make me stronger. Adversity,” he says, and the word trails out. “Adversity was his favorite word. Always to...improve me. His project. Always to further me. Do I have to tell you this?” he asks, turning toward the bed again. The bitterness and the anger beneath it fade, bitten back, replaced by scorn. “I thought you knew everything about me.” He smiles. It is sharp, disdainful.

“I could,” Charles says. “But I don't.” He shifts, spreading his hands over the edge of the bed, head slightly bowed. Erik looks over at him. When he first met Charles, he had thought the sympathy he professed for people was affected. Now that he has grown to know him better, however, he knows that isn’t true. Charles is sympathetic to just about everyone. He can’t help but be. He’s uniquely tied in to their point of view, their experience, what they are feeling. Maybe a colder man would reject that knowledge, but that is not Charles’ nature. He is soft. It’s a failing in almost more ways than it is an asset.

When he does that, sympathizes so deeply, gives him looks of understanding, Erik wants to hate him more than anything. Erik prefers not to think about Charles’ attempts at connection if he can. He has never been one to accept pity or compassion when it was, on rare occasion, extended to him.

“What was meant to be in the basement?” Erik asks. As he often does in Charles’ presence, he forcefully banishes any detailed thoughts on what they’ve just discussed, the images (dark teeth, empty shells, fire, smoke and ash that smelled like a cooking fire) fluttering before his mind and then disappearing as quickly as he can hide them from Charles' sight.

“Nothing,” says Charles, looking up from the floor with a faint smile. “There’s nothing down there. Just a little boy scared of the dark.”

Erik watches him, and he smiles, faintly. Charles is lying, and it makes him feel just a little less uneven, in that moment, knowing his friend has something to hide as well.


	2. Chapter 2

As strange as the night before was, when Erik comes downstairs to the kitchen the following morning, Charles is sitting there in his robe with the paper in his hands and eggs on the table, as if all is normal. Eggs are, as near as Erik can tell, the only thing Charles knows how to cook. Erik expects nothing less from a man who has been catered to by chefs and maids for most of his life.

The manor itself hasn’t been staffed for years, since Charles left it for college. Someone was brought in to clean the place up and ready it for its slew of fresh occupants, but, aside from that, they were on their own as far as cooking and cleaning were concerned. They couldn’t risk a maid walking around a corner and seeing Sean shattering wine glasses in a bid to impress Raven, after all.

“Mm, you’re up,” Charles says, swallowing coffee and making a face. “Good, I thought we could do some more training today.”

“You burned the coffee again,” Erik says.

“I’ll get it,” Charles insists. “It’s just going to take time. I almost had it this morning but it’s...trickier than I had anticipated.”

Erik reaches over and plucks Charles’ cup from his hand while he protests, dumping it into the kitchen sink and rinsing it under the tap. He reaches for the bag of grounds and the sterling silver press, one of a thousand small but ostentatious displays of wealth scattered throughout the house that make him think of when he was a boy, how much he would have given for just one of the paintings or pieces of silverware to take to help his parents. How many rations of food would one of those paintings been worth to a guard in the camps? He’s grown more used to wealth after living around it for the past ten years, but there is still a boy somewhere in him that looks at the press and wonders how many loaves of bread it would buy, how many lives it might have offered a chance at escape.

“Are any of the students awake?” Erik asks, filling the kettle and setting it on the stove.

“They’re not students,” Charles says, leaning his head on his fist. “We’re not a school.”

“We’re not?” Erik asks. “We teach them, we train them.”

“Not if you and I are still learning as well,” Charles points out. “But yes, Raven and Hank are awake upstairs. Did I tell you Hank has set himself to building a new Cerebro here on the grounds?”

“You didn’t,” Erik says, pausing, then turning around and leaning against the counter while the water boils. “That’s good news, Charles. We can use it to find Shaw that much more quickly.”

Charles’ gaze, which had been a little dull with drowsiness, sharpens. It’s almost imperceptible, but Erik spots it. “Yes, we can,” he says.

Erik knows Charles knows precisely what he’s thinking without even needing to read his mind for it. Irritating. The kettle begins to whistle behind him, and he turns to pull it off the flame, scooping coffee into the press. “Do you know how long it will take him?”

“It’s just a prototype until there’s time to build a new shell for the system, so not long. A week, maybe. In the mean time, none of us are up to fighting fit yet.”

Erik chuckles abruptly, pouring the hot water through the filter, filling the kitchen with the smell of fresh coffee, turning away from it as it brews. “You have high expectations,” he says. He borrows a piece of the paper Charles has already pored over and scans it with his eyes. More shrill news from the USSR in the international news section. Fundamentally, Erik can see the appeal of the system the soviets operate under. Money and food to the poor always sounds like the best of plans when it is first proposed. That does not change his distaste for any man who feels he is the ultimate authority on what was best for his countrymen, and ships those he dislikes to far away camps for the good of the nation. Maybe they would be due to turn their attention to the soviets once the battle with Shaw was over. Breaking humanity's world powers one by one could only be good for the cause, and it would be so nice to start with one he already despised. It would turn the job into something of a pleasure.

When the coffee is done, he pours some out for them both, passes Charles’ mug back to him, and sits. Erik takes his coffee black, and he watches with a mixture of amusement and disgust as Charles heaps spoonfuls of sugar into the mug. “You are British, you know. Maybe you should just stick to tea if you hate the taste of coffee so much.”

“I love coffee,” Charles insists, taking a sip and schooling his face against the grimace it wants to make. “I have high expectations because I know we can all improve, Erik.” He pauses, takes another sip. “This is...damned good stuff. But you did just the same things I did! How did you make it taste like this?”

“By not putting in double the amount of coffee needed,” Erik says. “If we could all do with improvement, what about you?”

“You’re going to teach me to make coffee?” Charles asks, smiling.

“Useless,” Erik says into his mug, taking a sip and setting it aside. “No, I mean training you. You’ve been working with me, I ought to get to extend the same courtesy. You can’t pretend you don’t have anything to learn.”

Charles swirls his coffee around before setting his mug down on his discarded paper. “Fair point,” he says, and nods. “Alright. Finish your coffee, and we’ll go out to the forest.”

 

Erik passes Raven on his way out of the house, after dressing and returning to the ground floor. “Were you and Charles arguing last night?” she asks, in that tobacco voice of hers, bitter and smoky sweet. She’s wearing a cream colored dress that flutters against her calves in the breeze coming in through the open back door, blonde hair perfectly coiffed by her imagination.

Erik pauses. He’d forgotten entirely that Raven has the room just down the hall from Charles. “No. Just a conversation.”

She shrugs. “Alright, just curious. We all hate it when the dads of our motley crew start fighting.”

“You are funny,” he says. “Aren’t you the same age as Charles and I, ‘daughter’?”

“It’s not polite to ask a lady her age,” she says, affecting innocence, blonde hair slipping over one shoulder as she cants her head, grinning. She certainly behaves like the girl she appears to be. Erik thinks that no one could ever mistake Charles and Raven for siblings, not even like this, wearing the facade she shows the world. He acts like her father, and for all his pervasive reach into the minds of everyone around him, he doesn’t seem to realize how it grates on her. 

“My apologies,” he says. His gaze is steady and intent. “I’m glad you don’t hide your youth,” he says, as he backs toward the door. “I would hate to see you hide anything else about yourself.”

He has already turned by the time the statement is finished, and so doesn’t see her face as he leaves the house.

 

Charles is already at the edge of the trees when Erik reaches them, hands tucked into the pockets of his tweed jacket. “It’s as if you’re trying to make yourself worthy of your degree by following stereotypes,” Erik says, gesturing to the coat.

“I like this coat,” Charles says. “Thank you for your helpful critique of my style of dress, however.” He pulls his hands from his pockets. “So. We know that you can manipulate metal. But how are you with identifying it?”

“By type?” Erik asks. Type is easy. It’s like a taste in his mouth when his powers wrap around the metal, the brightness of gold, the weighty ashiness of lead.

“No, by shape,” Charles says. He opens his palm. He’s holding a small statue of a Chinese dragon. It’s made of solid silver, and Erik thinks of the coffee press. “Think of it like a game. If you were to know a piece of jewelry someone was wearing, say, or a belt buckle they always wore, and you could identify that unique metal object by its shape, you could find anyone. In a crowd, tracking them through wilderness, anywhere. And please, my friend, I know what you’re thinking, and don’t.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” Erik says, and then sighs, slightly. ”Oh, right, of course you do.”

“And I didn’t have to read your mind that time, either,” Charles says. “You can’t think Shaw would be foolish enough to wear metal jewelry when he knows that you are on his trail? No, there is no application of this to him, but this will let you find someone close by when you need to, allies or enemies.”

Erik studies the dragon. Its small, finely sculpted face leers up at him from Charles’ palm. “Alright," he says, begrudging. "I suppose it’s worth a shot.”

“Good,” Charles says, and clasps him on the shoulder. “Memorize the shape of this statue. I’m going into the forest. You give me two full minutes with your back turned to get away from here, and then you track the statue. I’ve scattered some other metal pieces around that are the same size, just to make things more interesting. This is about fine control, not brute force.”

“And your training?” Erik asks.

“I am going to get myself as lost as possible and see if I can’t find you first,” he says. “General direction is easy enough, but fine control is, I am willing to admit, a bit more difficult. I might find the clearing you are hiding in, but within that ten feet you could still sneak up behind me if you were moving quickly.”

“Fair challenge,” Erik says. He turns to face the house. “Two minutes. I’m counting.”

He hears Charles disappear into the forest behind him. From his vantage point across the field from the house, Erik can see the upstairs balconies and through most of the back windows. The day is beautiful, late summer bright and beginning to cool from the heat of the past months. Hank and Sean are nowhere to be seen, but he can see Alex in the kitchen making a late breakfast.

He tips his gaze up and sees a flash of blue. Someone is on the upstairs balcony.

Raven can’t see him from where she’s standing, but he can see her clearly. She’s moving slowly toward the stone railing, that cream-colored dress setting off her blue skin and red hair in a striking way. She has her eyes closed, and she is soaking up the sun like she has never been under its rays before. Erik wonders how long it’s been since she’s been outside in her own skin.

Her eyes open, and she looks across the landscape. It only takes a few seconds for her to see him at the edge of the forest, and she backs up a few steps. He raises a hand to wave to her, and she disappears back inside the house.

It’s a start.

 

The two minutes of waiting comes to an end, and, as it does, Erik begins to feel a strange sensation. It’s almost like a tug, like someone has hooked him beneath his collar bone and is pulling him into the forest. At first he thinks that it is simply the pull of the metal statue, his own instincts guiding him on. Perhaps this will even be easier than he thought.

But no, that isn’t it at all. He begins sweeping his reach out, picking out the metal pieces scattered through the forest and trying to concentrate in on them enough to feel their edges, find their distinct shapes. General impressions are easy - type of metal, size - but finding the finer aspects requires the sort of careful control in identification he’s never needed to have. What does the shape of a piece of metal matter when you’re firing it as a projectile?

The pulling sensation, that sharp tug, has begun to grow insistent to the point of actual pain whenever he moves toward an object that proves to be the wrong one.

Five objects are felt out and discarded, and each one is identified a little easier than the last. The curves of one pin it as a paperclip, the sharp edges and divets of another as a metal die. At last, he finds it - the curved, spined shape of the sculpture, subtler than the others, less geometric, and only a hundred feet to his left.

As he begins moving quietly through the forest toward the statue, the pulling sensation lessens, fades, and then disappears altogether. He’s only a few feet from the clearing, now, and he can hear his friend tramping around in the bushes. The sound is coming from the opposite side of the clearing from where he can sense the statue. It’s a good trick, abandoning the statue to hide on the other side, and he has to give Charles silent commendation on it. He moves closer, ever closer, stilling both thought and body to hide himself from his friend.

When a hand closes around his shoulder, he very nearly elbows Charles in the face spinning around. Charles dodges just in time, hands up. “Well!” Charles says, sputtering with surprise. His shock begins to dissolve into laughter. “You can’t hit me just because I’ve beaten you!”

Erik’s shoulders fall. “Charles. But I heard you on the other side.”

“Illusion,” Charles says. He’s smirking. Smug bastard. “You _thought_ you heard me tramping about in the bush, but I still had the statue on me.” To prove it, he produces it from his pocket and wiggles it. “Trust your instincts with a telepath, not your ears.”

“Duly noted,” Erik says. The tugging has gone as if it never was. “Were you leading me along?”

Charles’ mirth is slowly dampened by confusion. “...no, I wasn’t. I actually thought you were pulling me, with the statue.”

“So you felt it too?”

“I did,” Charles says. He pauses, trying to reason it out. “Maybe it was unconscious. We were both looking for each other. Maybe we pulled on one another with our focus.”

“At the same time?” Erik asks, turning back toward the house. Charles walks beside him. “Seems unlikely, don’t you think?”

“It does,” Charles admits. He doesn’t offer an explanation. Anything is possible, now that mutants have begun turning against one other.

Erik thinks of the dream the night before, of what was supposed to be in that basement for that scared little boy, and what was actually waiting for him. He doesn’t say it, but Charles looks at him, and he knows he picked the thought up. “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’s probably nothing.”

Erik doesn’t need to be a telepath to know Charles doesn’t believe his own words.


	3. Chapter 3

Dinner that night is a raucous affair, everyone gathered around the long table in the dining room eating steaks. Charles offered to cook them, but Erik flatly refused to let him turn them into charcoal, and cooked them himself. They forget, for an hour, that Shaw is taking the world to the doorstep of nuclear war, that no one knows if they have weeks, or months, or days. They know they will have to move soon, but until Shaw shows his face again, until they have a lead, all they can do is use the time they have to train, strengthen, and become a force to be reckoned with.

Erik doesn’t quite understand how this all happened. He’s accustomed to traveling on his own. Allies get killed. Now he's cooking dinner for a house full of students, whatever Charles wants to call them. Where did the tables turn?

Despite Erik’s first impressions of the house as cavernous, empty, and far too vast for one family, it has become a place alive with activity, perhaps even a kind of familial affection. Judging by the smile on Charles’ face as he watches Hank try to explain the finer points of the physics that make a plane fly to Raven (despite Alex poking him in the leg with a fork to attempt to distract him), Charles likes seeing it occupied.

 _There was too much space here when I was growing up_ , comes the thought, reminding Erik for the thousandth time that his thoughts are only somewhat his own, here. _This is how it always should have been._

Erik remembers the cold darkness of the dream from the night before, and glances over at Charles, waiting for a reaction. But he’s already turned his attention to the other end of the table. “Sean, I don’t think that’s - “ But it’s too late, and Sean has tossed his steak up from his plate. He screams, and the shockwaves carry it through the air for a moment, the majestic flying steak, like a surrealist acrobatic act. It falls wetly to the floor.

Everyone spends most of the next few minutes doubled over with laughter or asking some version of “ _Why_ , Sean?” His only answer is that he “Wanted to see if it would float or just, you know, get tenderized.” Whatever Erik had wanted to ask Charles about that empty, cold house in his dream, the moment has passed. The adults get more beer, the teenagers more steak, and the meal drags itself on long after the sun has dropped below the horizon.

Erik parts with Charles at the stairs to the basement. He intends to get some target practice in, and he has enough respect for the beauty of the place not to bore holes in the hardwood with knives.

They pause at the top of the stairs, as the students spread out throughout the house. “Not too late,” Charles admonishes. “Tomorrow morning we’re going to do a group practice, show each other what we’ve learned.”

There are a few vague, mumbled responses, and Charles smiles a little. “Raven is right,” Erik says. “You are their father.”

“I am not,” Charles scoffs. “I’m too young and attractive to have children yet.”

“I’m starting to think your days of chasing coeds are over,” Erik says, shaking his head. “Damn shame they’ll have to miss out on your speech about their freckles from now on.”

“It’s complex genetics,” Charles says. “...That I may or may not have worked into a foolproof pickup, yes, but I paid good money for the degree that fostered that speech and got me those girls. I like to think of it as dissertation number two.”

“The effect of small, educated men with blue eyes on British female university students.”

“I am not small.”

“Don’t lie. I talked to your sample.”

Charles begins to laugh, and Erik can’t help but reciprocate. His hand falls from the end of the banister to his side, where it brushes against the hilt of the knife at his side, a cold jolt of reality. What is he doing? He’s making jokes about girls and eating dinner with students, letting them all play family around him when Shaw is out there, somewhere, surely laughing about the fact that he wasn’t able to catch him when he had him, had him _so close_ -

“Stop that,” Charles says.

Erik hadn’t even realized that he’d become lost in thought until Charles grabbed forcible hold of his attention again. “You’re allowed to have a laugh now and then, you know.”

Erik can’t answer that, and surely he doesn’t really need to. He feels a surge of bitterness that Charles heads him off at every single turn when his attention goes back to Shaw. “I should train,” he says. His smile is still present, though it’s become a bit more faint. “Get some sleep, Charles, you must be exhausted after cheating at your little game earlier.”

Charles, partway up the stair, leans over the railing. “I did not cheat,” he says. Erik just smirks in response. “I didn’t!” He got a few steps further before adding, “And, for your information, the ladies in the bars think that I am _extremely_ impressive.”

“I can report you for ethics violations if you skew your variables to get good statistics,” Erik says.

Hearing Charles scoff with annoyance from above him is enough to bring back a little of that earlier good feeling.

 

He spends a long, long while in the basement, firing nails, scraps of metal, and knives into the target he’s set up for himself. His aim is excellent - he’s been doing this for years, after all - but this is about keeping the blade sharp, and reminding himself why he is here. Looking back at the day, the dinner, talking to Charles, he feels an edge of doubt dig in beneath his ribs. What is he trying to pretend he is? Who is he trying to be? He hasn’t had a family since he was twelve years old, and he hasn’t known peace since he was eight. He can’t remember what a light heart feels like as it beats in his chest. He long ago stopped hoping he ever would. He is Shaw’s monster. He always has been. He always will be, long after he’s killed him.

Logic, of course, dictates that this house is the best place in the world to wait for news of Shaw. If anyone is going to find out where he is, it will be these people and their allies in the CIA. It’s up to Shaw to make the next move. But the idleness of it, the lull; Erik can’t fully settle in, can’t give way to it. War is coming, he’s sure of it, refuses to lose sight of it. He can’t deny that there is something that lulls him about this place and the people in it, something that makes him wonder if the sort of life he’s always felt wasn’t meant for him is just now within his grasp. He pushes back hard on the idea, however. It is tempting to think about it, but it won’t last. Then again, if it is destined not to last, is it not acceptable to enjoy it while it’s here?

And, then again, he might just be thinking too much. The people in this house share his goal, and that goal is Shaw. If he can't take Shaw on his own, as his pathetic failure the first time proved, he has no other choice but to stay. This uneasy ultimatum settles it. Yes, he will stay, at least for now. And if he needs to leave, there is nothing stopping him. Nothing at all.

He throws a knife, and it hits just to the left of the bullseye. He plucks it out with a practiced flick of his wrist that yanks it from the target across the room, and catches it mid-flight. The blade is polished to a mirrored shine, and it reflects his face, his image interrupted by the words engraved on the knife. ‘Blut Und Ehre’ prints across his reflection.

He sheathes the knife and walks back upstairs, trying to ignore the slowly loosening pull he’s been feeling for the last hour, tugging insistently upward, toward Charles’ room.

 

Erik is laying on the table.

Shaw has a knife. He’s trailing it across his abdomen, cutting him open. He will do this, and he will sew it back up. Stitches, stitches everywhere. Making him a patchwork man, the sum of the parts Shaw has built him out of, raised from amongst the dead in the camp below them.

The dissection room is painted in Van Gogh colors, thick smears of red on his pale skin, bright green smocks and masks that are just indistinct smudges, the dark pressed dots of Shaw’s eyes. It is a scene built of a memory blurred and intensified by pain, pain shooting white hot through nerve endings, pain twisting in cyclone spirals through his bones. Shaw digs the knife in, sinking it up to the hilt. He cannot scream, even when Shaw’s hand disappears into his chest cavity. He can feel him burrowing. He is looking for his heart.

Shaw is talking, but the words don’t translate - Charles still doesn’t speak German. All he knows is the pain, the anger, searching blindly for something...metal. Nothing presents itself except the knife, which will not budge. No, not metal. He is looking for a mind, for Shaw’s - or for something metal on Shaw - he can’t quite recall.

He grabs Shaw roughly by the mind, like grabbing by the hair close to the scalp, and tries to freeze him in place. But the scene begins to melt, knife still in his chest. The room is not a room at all. The walls are just set pieces, printed onto heavy velvet curtains, and they ripple back to reveal a cold space that goes on and on.

It is built of stone. There are four walls, but it is a thousand feet beneath the earth. Deep as it feels, though, there is a window in the back wall, and a window in the door. For a moment, Erik sees Raven’s face through it. He calls to her, but she’s already turned to walk away.

It’s cold, so cold in the room. Outside the back window, looking out onto a grey sky, Charles can see snowflakes falling.

“You must come.”

It’s a girl’s voice, sweet as a song but so _loud_ , and Charles claps his hands over his ears. It’s inside his mind and outside, ringing and ringing and ringing. It’s like standing next to a church bell as tall as a man as it tolls, sending a message out across the countryside.

“You must come,” says the voice again. Erik thinks he sees something beneath the window, something small, shivering, but louder than any sound, so loud it wraps the world up in tone, deafening and yet he still hears. There is no escaping her voice. “They hid here,” she says. He has a vague impression - if he could just press in closer - “They hid. You must come. She wants you to listen. You must come.” The words increase in volume until their syllables are barely distinguishable. He throws his head back, not knowing what he is, where he is, or why, and screams into the tidal wave of sound, interference, the crashing together of minds on minds like cymbals.

 

When Erik starts awake, he’s rolled off his bed in the midst of the dream. His ears are ringing like the sound had been something real, and there is a knock on his door.

The tugging is back, but it’s not so much a tug as a yank, now, and a headache is building in his temples. He reaches out blindly for the alarm clock at it hops into his hand. He checks the time. Three in the morning. How long did that dream last?

The knocking has become more insistent, so he drops the clock to the floor and stumbles to his feet, pulling the door open. Raven is standing there, a robe wrapped tightly around herself, her arms folded over her chest, and she looks nervous. “Something wrong?” he asks.

“Are you alright?” she asks, trying to look around him.

“I’m fine,” he says. He presses the base of his palm against his temple, rubbing back to try to soothe the ache. “What’s wrong?”

“You were...screaming in your sleep,” Raven says. “I’ve heard you, you know, shouting before, in the middle of the night, but not like that.” He doesn’t like the way she’s looking at him. That look says it’s not the first time she’s heard him cry out in a nightmare, that indefensible place where he can do nothing to soothe the fears of a boy.

“I’m fine,” he says, jaw set against the headache and the exposed vulnerability, and slips past her into the hall. She backs up a step to let him pass. “But I need to talk to Charles.”

“Is he alright?” she asks, looking past him down the hall. “I thought I heard something down there, too.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Erik says, a little too quickly. “But I’ll check.”

Raven seems unsure as he turns his back on her, but there is no time to collect himself and reassure her again. He needs to talk to Charles, and he needs to talk to him now. He grits his teeth against the pulling, which has only grown stronger, and at the way it eases with every step he takes toward Charles.


	4. Chapter 4

Charles is waiting with the door open when Erik reaches the end of the hall, and he backs into the room as he approaches. Erik shuts the door behind himself, catching it just in time to keep it from slamming.

“You can’t try to tell me again that this is all coincidence,” Erik says. He's flushed with anger at this new violation of his most private memories, and, now that his anger has a target, it has intensified tenfold. “Who was that girl?”

“I don’t know,” Charles says, watching as Erik paces away from him. “But...I was wrong. You’re right, something is happening. I could feel it this time, the presence of someone else in that shared space. Someone is doing this to us.”

“And the pulling?” Erik asks. “It’s gotten stronger since this afternoon. I could feel it in the bedroom and it's only down the hall from you.”

“I could feel it as well,” Charles says, fingers resting lightly on his lips. “It’s as if someone is trying to keep us close to one another. They’re attempting to link our consciousnesses. Hence the shared dreaming, and the pain from physical separation.”

“That girl,” Erik says. Her image is burned into the backs of his eyelids still, her voice ringing high and clear in his ears. He swallows the implications of ‘linked consciousnesses’. “Did you know her?”

“No,” Charles says, “There was something behind her that felt familiar, but I couldn't place it. Whoever she is, the psychic interference she’s throwing out is staggering.”

Erik paces back, toward the opposite side of the room. He needs to solve this, fix it, do something. He can be patient, but only when the next move has already been planned. “And she’s not nearby?” he asks.

Charles touches his forehead, and Erik feels something, something strange, like the soft brush of other minds against his own. It reminds him of the sensation from that first dream, other minds sweeping past and touching along all sides. Charles’ eyes open again. “No. There’s no one here but us.”

“And she couldn’t be hiding herself from you?”

“She could,” he says. “But I doubt it. I would at least feel the presence of another telepath somewhere on the grounds, even if I couldn’t sense her thoughts.”

“So they’re doing this from a distance,” he says. “Who has that kind of reach?”

“No one,” Charles says.

They watch each other for a moment. The implications aren’t good. Erik's anger flares again. Someone is trying to do them harm, to do Charles harm, by dragging them together. There is something protective in that intense spike that he can’t and won’t address, and he looks away from Charles, counting on his distraction with the issue at hand to keep him from noticing. 

Then Erik thinks of something, and Charles’ eyes widen slightly. _They couldn’t,_ he thinks. Then, _But I suppose they could. If they copied the plans from the prototype at the CIA facility -_

“They could, Charles,” Erik says. “Shaw could have come back with anyone they needed if he used that teleporter of his. He could have brought a whole team of scientists to make a good enough blueprint for their own facsimile. Crude, maybe, but don’t underestimate Shaw. If he needed the best engineers in the world, he would get them, one way or another.” 

Charles runs a hand through his hair, already sticking up at all angles. It’s infuriating how charming he looks even at three in the morning when contemplating mental sabotage. His blue eyes are shadowed and dark. Erik can still feel a little of that pull toward him, even now, even in the room with him. Not a good sign as to how this thing is progressing. How much worse can it get? “If they have their own Cerebro and they can use it to project a telepath with this sort of ability, we are, all of us, in danger,” he says. “Tomorrow morning I’ll use Cerebro and see if I can’t find that girl. If she’s really this powerful, she should be easy enough to spot.”

“Can we afford to wait until morning?”

“Hank hasn’t even finished the machine yet,” Charles says. “He’ll need all the rest he can get to jerry-rig it enough that it works. No need to interrupt his sleep.”

“And if you can’t find her?” Erik asks. His gaze is sharp, focused tightly on Charles. Charles meets it, and sees the look he saw the night they first met. It had been fading, then, as he pulled Erik up from under the water, that intense focus, that rage sharpened down to a pin point and turned toward the bloody cause of avenging someone he had loved, someone long dead. Why he’s seeing it now, he’s not sure.

“I’ll look harder,” Charles says, softly.

Erik knows when he’s being placated, and he attempts to put his anger back where it belongs. Shaw has taken so much from him. He doesn’t get to take what is good about this house from him as well.

 

Before they part ways to try to salvage some sleep, Charles makes Erik agree that they won’t tell the students what’s happening. There is no need to frighten them when they don’t even know precisely what’s going on themselves. Charles does, however, tell Hank that they need to use his new Cerebro build ahead of schedule. Hank at first seems mildly panicked, then a little pleased with the challenge of getting it running on such short notice, particularly when Erik points out that he can use the data from this early experiment to augment the machine and make it better. Hank, thrilled, gets to work immediately. When Charles looks at Erik askance, Erik simply shrugs. “I know scientists,” he says, dry as a bone, eyes gone flat, hematite dark.

Erik goes with Charles to Cerebro, of course. When they wake in the morning at almost the same time, they meet each other in the hall. It’s uncomfortable to even be in their separate rooms, now. The tether pulling them together does in fact seem to be closing, making Hank’s work all the more important.

They eat breakfast together, not talking much, although Erik pushes Charles back from the coffee press with one finger and a raised brow, getting a smile from him. Erik has a pounding headache, and he has been hearing faint voices since he awoke. He has his own suspicions about what the sounds are, but he doesn’t tell Charles about them. If they can find that girl today and get this thing resolved, there will be no need to.

They spend most of the day overseeing the training of the students. They all gather together on the front lawn, exhibiting some of the things they’ve learned. Raven’s mimicry of voices, always good, is perfect enough now to be exactly the same when the sound waves are measured by one of Hank’s machines. With rumors of voice recognition technology in the works at the CIA it will make for an excellent asset, not to mention useful in the simple trickery of men that can be so important. Sean makes a display of flying around the courtyard, and Hank has to leap out of the way and catch a tree branch with his feet when Alex sends a beam of energy hurtling dangerously close to him. The mood is light with everyone but Erik and Charles, but they manage to put on a good face until everyone has gone back inside. Then they follow Hank into the carriage house.

Charles told Hank that the carriage house was his to make a lab of when they first arrived at the mansion. Separated just enough from the main house to prevent waking anyone up with late night welding, explosions, or any of the other dangerous and loud side effects of science in progress, it’s ideal. The building is scattered with schematics, carefully balanced beakers and microscopes, and the host of scientific equipment that Charles had brought in for him.

Cerebro II dominates the room, though the machine is still smaller than the one at the CIA. The computers attached to it are tiny, only a few feet wide and about a foot deep, and though some panels have yet to be attached and Erik can see exposed wires, they are humming evenly. The console itself is only partially finished. “I can run it from here,” Hank says, indicating a remote in his hand, covered with buttons and attached to the base console by a thick cable

“And you’re sure it’s safe?” Erik asks. It earns him a look from Charles. They aren’t supposed to question the students at moments like this, just encourage them. But he knows that Charles wants to be sure as well, even if he’s not willing to be as blunt about it as his friend is.

“I’m sure,” Hank says, swiping a thumb over a mark on his glasses and straightening his shoulders. “I tested it twice this morning, and it’s working fine.”

“...But you tested it without a telepath in it,” Erik points out.

Hank’s mouth works a little, unsure of what to say to that. “...It’ll be fine,” he says finally, with a nod.

“Encouraging,” Erik says, as he turns, into Charles’ ear, even as Charles says, “I’m sure it will be. I’ve already used it once, Hank, I trust you to know what you’re doing.”

That seems to restore a little of Hank’s confidence, and he smiles a touch, gesturing to the console. “You can stand there,” he says.

“Where’s the egg cup hat?” Erik asks, moving off to the side.

“The _neural activity receiver_ hasn’t been built yet,” Hank says, pounding the name in like it will get Erik to say it in future. “I’ve attached handles on the sides for contact instead. The machine should still pick up the electrical pulses from his brain by using the nerves in his arms as a conduit. Not as efficient, but it works.”

Charles wraps his hands around the round ends of the handles, one and then the other, settling his fingers against the cool, slick metal. “Should I expect anything different from the first time round?” he asks.

Erik is watching Hank closely. If he shows even the slightest amount of doubt that this thing isn’t safe, he’s going to yank Charles away from it until it’s in working order. Threat against them or not, it isn’t worth Charles frying his brain for.

Hank pauses, catching Erik’s eye and freezing there. “...not as far as I know,” he says, dragging his eyes back to the machine. “Maybe a little bumpier ride, because of the lack of direct contact. But that’s -” He clears his throat. Erik wonders if he can feel his eyes boring into the back of his head. Good, he’d rather have him be a little nervous and be sure. “That should be it.”

Charles nods to him, reassuring. Erik’s glare apparently hasn’t gone unnoticed. “I trust you, Hank,” he says.

Charles settles his hands onto the handles, and he shuts his eyes as Hank hits the button to boot up the power on the machine. The whirring of the computers behind him speeds up, getting louder and louder, and something sparks from the console. Charles winces, his hands going white-knuckled tight around the handles of the machine.

Erik feels a wave of panic, and he’s too worried about Charles to really bother to hide it. “Charles -” he says, but as he’s saying it the machine sparks again and -

_Voices and faces and dreams, girl wants a bike, girl wants a bike for her birthday, woman wishes her husband were home when the man breaks in, woman sits in a cafe smoking and thinking about the man coming to meet her, boy puts his blocks in alphabetical order, woman pulls the gun from the drawer beside her bed while her husband lies there sleeping next to the maid, man puts the numbers together at work, little girl cries, grass around her bursts into flame, angerhatelove so much love that it almost burns, love in a way that is foreign, love resting on the tongue with an unspoken word, doubled inside his own body, knowing what hides there, knowing_

It’s like he no longer has a physical body, like someone has ripped his mind loose and let it travel everywhere in the world at once, hear thoughts, dreams, fantasies, everything. There is no sense of self, really, just a turning inside out and emptying into the ether, feeling everything, things he has never felt and never wanted to feel. He can only keep hold of a few physical realities, that of pain and of weight.

_Girl. Girl. Girl with a shell of rock. Silhouette girl, with a hand on her shoulder. Silhouette girl, sparkling under the light - no, not the sunlight, artificial light, electric lamps, in a cell with one window, and the window is the world, and I miss mommy and daddy, and they said they are less, and the lady is at the window again, and the lady says they are in heaven, that the world is not for_ them 

Erik can hear again. He hears the tail end of shouted words, coming from his own mouth. 

The pain he had felt in that haze of other people’s lives registers as a fiery splintering in his throat. He knows the feeling, the feeling of wearing out the vocal chords with screaming. 

Someone has their hand on his back. He says, “Charles,” and he remembers something, remembers that when he had been outside himself he had doubled back around, felt his own soul touched and seen what was there. He had seen hate and anger but there had been something else, something only he could know, a gift he would never, ever be able to give or to show. Something covered. Something best forgotten. 

He passes out. 

Erik wakes up in a haze, on a soft surface. He tries to sit up, but a hand presses him back down. He opens his eyes and winces - a splitting headache his joined the burning in his throat, and the light overhead is piercing. It’s the worst hangover he’s ever had but with tenfold strength, and he groans. “God.” 

_Don’t try to sit up._ Charles, of course. _Just lay back. You’ve been through a serious psychic shock._

“What the hell happened?” 

_The use of Cerebro had some...unintended side effects._ The next thought comes quickly, cutting off Erik’s immediate turn to Hank in his mind. _It wasn’t his fault, Erik, you can’t blame him._

Erik takes in a slow breath. Even breathing hard makes his head pound. “The link? The - tie, whatever it is, was it that?” 

_I believe so,_ Charles thinks. The light shining through Erik’s eyelids from the bedside lamp dims, and he opens them a touch. Someone has turned the lights off, and it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust. 

There is Charles. His face is only a few inches from his own, eyes fixed on his. Maybe it’s the headache, or the fact that Erik had thought briefly he might never see anything again, but they are the bluest eyes he has ever seen in his life. Charles smiles, just a little bit. “Thank you.” 

Erik can actually feel Charles’ breath ghosting across his lips, and his stare lingers a little longer than it should. He remembers something then, from the tail end of what had happened with Cerebro - but he buries it just as quickly. He can’t risk bringing that out into the light where Charles might see it. 

He realizes a little too late that he is still staring without saying anything, and that Charles is leaning almost flush against him. “I think...you can get off my chest, now,” Erik says when he finds the breath to speak, raising a brow. 

Charles sits up. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” If Erik didn’t know better, he would say Smooth Charles looked awkward about something for once. “I was simply worried about you. We all were.” 

“We all?” Erik asks, and he looks to the door, where four heads are leaning around the corner into the doorway. “I’m alive,” he says. “Move along, nothing to see.” True to form, none of them listen, and Hank, Alex, Raven, and Sean all move into the room. 

“So somebody hooked you two up with some kind of wacky mutant rope trick?” Sean asks. 

“Not exactly,” Erik says, resting his palm against his forehead. “You told them?” 

“I had to,” Charles says. “You were out for hours, and I wasn’t sure what the side effects might be." 

“Your machine works, Hank,” Erik says, glancing over at him. 

Hank blanches visibly. “If I had been told,” he says, a little indignant, “I could have adjusted accordingly, or recommended you not go through with it at all. I didn’t plan for that kind of interference.” 

“It’s not your fault, Hank. At any rate, what’s done is done. And at least we have a lead, now.” 

Yes. Almost at the cost of his sanity, they had a lead. Wonderful. Charles frowns, and Erik sighs. “I’ll be fine, Charles,” he says. He doesn’t say that he will never forget the horror of having no identity, of not knowing who he was, of being millions of people at once. He doesn’t have to, of course, because Charles knows it. 

“Is it always like that?” Erik asks him. 

“No,” Charles says. “You’re not a telepath. I can sort through the information and find the people I need to. Because you don’t have the filter I do, it was all chaos, I could feel it.” 

“No wonder my brain feels like scrambled eggs,” Erik said, pushing himself up to sit. “You said something about a lead?” 

Charles nodded. “They’ve created a tool of their own to project mutant abilities over long distances.” 

“How?” Erik asks. 

“We’ll find out when we get there.” 

“That sounds like a great plan,” says Alex, from off to the side. 

“Are you done dropping breadcrumbs yet, Charles?” Raven asks. “Get where? What’s the tool?” 

Charles looks from his sister to Erik. His expression has gone grave, mouth set into a thin line. “They’re in the mountains, in one of the oldest cave systems in the country. And the tool is a girl.” 


End file.
